Tripura woman arrested for cross-border trafficking of Bangladeshis, Rohingya

The Indian EXPRESS
Written by Debraj Deb
Agartala (tripura) | April 2, 2024  

Government Railway Police officer in-charge at Agartala railway station Tapas Das said Parul Akhter of Matinagar is being interrogated to determine if others are involved in the trafficking operations.

A Tripura-based woman was arrested for allegedly assisting Bangladeshi citizens and Rohingya to cross the international border. (Representational Image)

A joint team of security forces on Tuesday arrested a woman allegedly involved in cross-border trafficking of Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingya, from Matinagar in Sepahijala district along the Indo-Bangla international border.

Rohingya man narrates 16 days’ ordeal on route of trafficking

The Daily Star

Mohammad Jamil Khan
Thu Oct 13, 2022 

A transnational syndicate is using a new land route through Myanmar to traffic people, mostly Rohingyas from refugee camps in Bangladesh, to Thailand and Malaysia.

Previously, Rohingyas used to be trafficked to those countries by sea, but traffickers started using the new route as law enforcers increased vigilance in Cox's Bazar and in the Bay of Bengal.

The human trafficking syndicate comprises of Bangladeshis, Rohingyas, people of the Burmese Mog tribe, and Thai and Malaysian nationals and it has been using this land route for around eight months, said sources in law enforcement agencies, Rohingya leaders, and a trafficked youth.

Luring Rohingyas with promises of a better life in Malaysia or Thailand, members of the syndicate first take them from camps in Cox's Bazar, to a village in near Myanmar border, and then send them to the destinations via Rakhine State, they said.

Myanmar: Trafficking issues, plight of Rohingyas in Thailand

ORF  OBSERVER RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Monitors
Jan 21 2021

South Asia Weekly | Volume XIV; Issue 3
News and analyses from South Asia this week.

Enot Poloskun — iStock/Getty

Sreeparna Banerjee

In an appalling event, last week, 19 Rohingyas and a Thai woman accused of housing them were arrested for illegal entry into Thailand. Another group of 100 Rohingyas were uncovered from Yangon in Myanmar. Both these groups were bound to travel to Malaysia in search of a better life. In addition, there are reports that around 33 Thai officials along with civilians will be charged with disciplinary action for facilitating human-trafficking along the Thai-Myanmar border.

This discovery comes at a time when people of Thailand are accusing migrant workers from Myanmar as being responsible for the rising number of the Covid-19 cases in the country. After two months of hate-speech and confusion, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was tactful in stating that the recent infections were due to foreign workers smuggled across Thai border and had nothing to do with Myanmar migrants per say. On a positive note, this entire event also uncovered the difficult conditions that the migrant workers, especially those from Myanmar, are facing in Thailand.

Part II: Refugees trafficking network’s route to false salvation

MYANMAR TIMES 

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
17 DEC 2020

Northern Rakhine Muslim refugees alight from a ship that brought them to Aceh Indonesia in June. Photo: AFP

 

For the northern Rakhine Muslim refugees, escaping the Bangladesh camp starts with a down payment that can reach the equivalent of $2,000, often paid by a northern Rakhine Muslim's husband or other relatives in Malaysia using mobile banking applications.

 

Refugees then get a phone call typically from someone they do not know.

"The call came after a few days and a man instructed us to go to the rickshaw stand in the main food market area of the camp," said 20-year-old Julekha Begum, who married a northern Rakhine Muslim man in Malaysia via a video chat app.

Video shows smugglers beating Rohingya on trafficking boat

Aljazeera
15 Dec 2020

 

This video grab taken on December 4, 2020 from an AFPTV video shows Rohingya refugees in a boat in Chakmarkul on August 26, 2020 [AFP]

Smugglers mercilessly beat rake-thin refugees crowded onto a fishing boat, in a video obtained by AFP news agency that shows rarely seen images from the front lines of the Rohingya trafficking network.

Filmed on a mobile phone by a smuggler who later fled the vessel, the video shows dozens of asylum seekers, including children, sitting in the hull and on the deck as smugglers stand among them.

Rohingya trafficking network sells dreams, delivers violence and extortion

FRANCH 24 

Cox's Bazar (Bangladesh) (AFP)

Issued on: 15/12/2020 - 

A months-long AFP investigation uncovered mobile phone images taken by a smuggler aboard a boat - AFP

Auto rickshaws slip easily past barbed-wire checkpoints at the world's biggest refugee camp, their drivers among the smallest players in a complex human trafficking network involving high-seas extortion gangs, corrupt police and drug lords.

Aboard the spluttering rickshaws are small groups of young men, women and children hoping to escape the misery of life with other members of their stateless Rohingya group who are crowded into shanties in Bangladesh.

Rohingya camps unprotected against traffickers

Prothum Alo------   
May 19, 2019

Bangladesh Coast Guard pose for a photo with rescued Rohingya refugees in Teknaf on 18 May 2019. Bangladesh authorities prevented 84 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar from attempting a perilous boat journey to Malaysia, officials said on 18 May. Photo: AFP

Although the government has issued ID cards for the Rohingya refugees, there are no definite statistics as to how many of them who came to Bangladesh since 25 August 2017 have fled the camps. Law enforcers have arrested 58,584 Rohingya people while fleeing, but no one knows how many of have actually left the camps.

Rohingya girls rescued from traffickers in Bangladesh

 Aljazeera
12 May 2019

Bangladesh police rescue 23 teenagers from being flown to Malaysia and arrest four human traffickers in a raid in Dhaka.

Concern is increasing about the number of young women being smuggled across borders to marry Rohingya men abroad [Kaan Bozdogan/Anadolu]

At least 23 teenage Rohingya girls have been rescued after being brought from refugee camps to the capital, Dhaka, to be sent to Malaysia by air, Bangladesh police said on Sunday.

Dhaka police also arrested four human traffickers including a Rohingya couple and recovered more than 50 Bangladeshi passports from them on Saturday.

Rohingya women, girls being trafficked to Malaysia for marriage

Ajazeera

by Kaamil Ahmed

08-05-2019

Al Jazeera reveals how refugees in Bangladesh camps are vulnerable to proposals from single Rohingya men in Malaysia.

 Hamida holds up a picture of her 15-year-old daughter-in-law, who was brought from Myanmar and into Bangladesh and then smuggled to Malaysia to marry her son [Kaamil Ahmed/Al Jazeera]

Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Senwara Begum travelled for two weeks by road and boat, over mountains and along rivers, guided only by a trafficker she feared, before she reached Malaysia to marry a man she had never met.

Traffickers committed crimes against Rohingyas: Report

theindepedent

28 March, 2019

Independent Online Desk

Over 170,000 boarded ships from Myanmar, Bangladesh in 2012-15, it says

Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) and Fortify Rights find “reasonable grounds” to believe that a human-trafficking syndicate committed “crimes against humanity” in Malaysia and Thailand against Rohingya men, women, and children from 2012 to 2015.

Traffickers committed crimes against humanity by enslaving and killing Rohingya, say rights groups.

The Telegraph
 27 MARCH 2019 •

By Nicola Smith
 

Thousands of Rohingya were crammed onto dangerous boats by traffickers CREDIT: ADIB CHOWDHURY/AFP

H

uman trafficking gangs are guilty of crimes against humanity for their brutal treatment of vulnerable Rohingya refugees trying to flee to Thailand and Malaysia, say human rights groups who released a harrowing new investigation on Wednesday. 

‘Do more to stop trafficking’.

THE Star ONLINE

Friday, 22 Mar 2019

BANGKOK: Authorities in China and Myanmar are failing to stop the brutal trafficking of young women, often teenagers, from the conflict-ridden Kachin region for sexual slavery, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

Trafficking in Rohingya camps feared rising as crisis rolls on

NEW STRAITSTIMES

By Reuters - February 5, 2019 @ 10:27am

 

COX’S BAZAR: In a shelter made of plastic sheets and bamboo next to a reeking stream in the world’s largest refugee settlement, Rohingya Nazma Akter recalled how her daughter was trafficked seven months ago.

Rashida, 17, was picked up next to a health clinic in a camp in southeast Bangladesh by a man who had been courting her by phone for sometime while her mother visited the doctor.
The man, however, turned out to be a trafficker.

( 22.11.2016 ) Myanmar’s War on the Rohingya ( New York Times )

The New York Times  
The Opinion Pages
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDNOV. 21, 2016

A family outside a market destroyed by fire, in a Rohingya village in Myanmar, in October. Credit Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

Myanmar has long persecuted the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, denying it basic rights to citizenship, to marry, to worship and to an education. After violence unleashed in 2012 by Buddhist extremists drove tens of thousands of Rohingya out of their homes, many risked their lives to escape in smugglers’ boats; more than 100,000 others are living in squalid internment camps. Now, a counterinsurgency operation by Myanmar’s military is again forcing thousands of Rohingya to abandon their villages.

Thai court sentences man to 35 years in Rohingya trafficking case ( Reuters )

REUTERS

by Alisa Tang | @alisatang 

Thomson Reuters Foundation
Wednesday, 31 August 2016

Rohingya migrant Muhammad Solim, 20, sits in a house in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Thailand, in this April 28, 2015 file photo. Muhammad Solim, a Rohingya previously living as a refugee in Bangladesh, said he suffers from the effects of malnutrition after spending nearly three months at sea and 90 days in a jungle camp before he was ransomed for the equivalent of US$2,240, paid in baht and ringgit. REUTERS/Aubrey Belford.

 

 The high-profile case led to the discovery of jungle camps, mass graves and an international trafficking ring By Alisa Tang